Liturgy Pacific is the on-line presence of Richard Geoffrey Leggett, Rector of Saint Faith's Anglican Church in Vancouver and Professor Emeritus of Liturgical Studies at Vancouver School of Theology. Here you will find sermons, comments on current Anglican and Lutheran affairs and reflections on the need for progressive orthodox Christians to re-claim our place on the theological stage.

Friday, February 9, 2018

Some Secrets Should Be Shared: Reflections on Mark 9.2-9 (RCL Last Epiphany B, 11 February 2018)

9.2
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a
high mountain apart, by themselves. And
he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became dazzling
white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah
with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi,
it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for
Moses, and one for Elijah.” 6
He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7 Then a cloud overshadowed them,
and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to
him!” 8 Suddenly when they
looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

9
As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about
what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

I was in
my late twenties and early thirties when I became aware that my father’s family
had secrets.The first secret unravelled
when I was at my parents’ home during a break from seminary.The telephone rang and an unfamiliar male
voice asked to speak to ‘Richard’.When
I replied that I was Richard, the speaker said, ‘Hi, it’s your brother, Reg.’When I told him that I had no brother, he
asked if I was ‘young Richard’, a term only used by members of my immediate family.He asked me to tell my father to call him
when he came home.That’s how I learned
that I had another uncle, a real ‘black sheep’ story.We met only once and his children have made
it clear in the years since that they are not interested in creating a wider
family circle.

Then, when
my grandfather died in 1982, my father told me that my ‘Uncle Charles’ would be
coming.When I asked who ‘Uncle Charles’
was, I was told that he was my grandfather’s half-brother.He lived about thirty miles from where my
grandparents lived and had children and grandchildren.All of them came to the funeral.Uncle Charles and his wife later came to our
wedding.We kept in touch until they
died, but I am not in touch with my cousins.

When I
was growing up, I was envious of my friends who had siblings and cousins.Myfamily was truly ‘nuclear’
--- mother, father and two children.By
1984 I had learned that I had an entire family whose existence was a secret due
to conflict between stepfathers and stepsons, fathers and sons, brothers and
half-brothers.I’m sure that at some
point either my grandfather or my father considered when would be the ‘right
time’ to share this information with my sister and me.By the time the secrets came out, however,
there was little to be done to re-unite the various branches of the
family.Decades of silence had done
their damage and the missed opportunities were well and truly missed.

Over the
past year we have witnessed the revelation of secrets that have been kept too
long and, in the keeping, caused considerable harm to those who kept them.Women and men have begun to reveal how they
were sexually harassed and assaulted by people they trusted and by people who
had power.In many cases the victims
were encouraged to keep silent or not believed.While it is difficult to hear these stories and we wonder how the damage
done can be repaired, now is the time when such secrets need to be shared.In the sharing the power of silence is broken
and the possibility of healing emerges.

Some
secrets, you see, need to be shared not kept.The question is, ‘When is the right time to share the secret?’

Throughout
the centuries Christians have pondered what is sometimes called the ‘messianic
secret’.We heard it in the last verse
of today’s gospel:“As they were coming
down the mountain, [Jesus] ordered them to tell no one about what they had
seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” [1]Can you imagine how difficult it must have
been for Peter, John and James not to share with their colleagues what had
happened on the mountain?Can you
imagine how difficult it must have been not to make use of this story when they
faced opposition during Jesus’ public ministry?I can hear Peter say to some critic, ‘Well, have any of your teachers
been called “Beloved” by God or been in conversation with Moses and Elijah?’

But this
secret was meant to be shared --- at the right time.It was only after the events during that last
week in Jerusalem and that early Sunday morning that Peter and all the other members
of Jesus’ community could understand the full meaning of what had happened on
the mountain.It is only after someone
experiences the resurrection that the transfiguration of Jesus ‘fits’ into the
story of what God is doing in and through Jesus, what God is doing in and
through the ministry of Jesus’ disciples.

After
the resurrection Jesus’ disciples were released to share the secret, the good
news that when a person meets Jesus of Nazareth, he or she meets God.The secret was shared widely and eventually
wrought a quiet revolution that spread throughout the world.But conflict between Christians led
eventually to what we now experience as ‘the separation of church and state’.With the separation of church and state, with
the growth of the freedom to practice or not to practice one’s religious faith,
I believe many Christians became like Peter, John and James as they reached the
foot of the mountain of transfiguration.We kept the secret of what we had experienced as disciples of Jesus.

We’ve
kept the secret for a number of reasons.Some of us have kept our faith secret because we are repulsed by
Christian fundamentalism and its intolerance and disrespect of others.When I have been interviewed by the media
about the ‘Christian’ view of a topic, I’ve often reminded the interviewer that
I can share my view, the view of an Anglican liberal catholic who is committed
to the dignity of every human being.Sometimes this has brought the interview to a quick conclusion!

But we’ve
also kept our faith secret because of a misunderstanding of what it means to
say that our faith is ‘personal’.We’ve
confused ‘personal’ with ‘private’ and ‘private’ with ‘secret’.What is private is not to be shared except in
a limited number of situations.‘Personal’
means my own experience of being a human being living in relationships with
other human beings and with the whole of creation.‘Personal’ means my story of what I have
learned, the joys and the sorrows, the wisdom and the folly.And now is the time to share with each other
and with those beyond this community of faith our personal experiences of the
risen Christ who has given us help, who has given us hope, who has given us a
home.

To share
this personal faith we must practice listening to the needs and concerns of
those with whom we share our lives.Have
we heard someone seeking help to meet the challenges of daily living?Have you found such help within this
community?Then share the story.Have we heard someone who has lost hope?Have you found such hope within this
community?Then share the story. Have we heard someone long for a place to call
‘home’?Have you found a home within
this community?Then share the
story.

True, we
cannot compel.We can only share and invite.Now is the time, my friends, because some
secrets, this secret, the secret of a God who calls each one of us ‘beloved’,
the secret of a God who is working in us and through us to bring us all into
fullness of life, this secret is should be shared.Now.Now.Now.

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About Me

Richard is a presbyter of the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster with a number of responsibilities. He is Rector of Saint Faith's Anglican Church in Vancouver. Richard is also the Principal Consultant for Liturgy Pacific, a worship consultancy providing educational seminars and resources for congregational life and ministry. After 23 years as a member of the faculty of Vancouver School of Theology, Dr Leggett became Professor Emeritus of Liturgical Studies in 2010. Since 1989 Dr Leggett has served on various national committees of the Anglican and Evangelical Lutheran churches in Canada and is a regular participant in the work of the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation. From 2010 to 2016 he was a Member of the Liturgy Task Force of the Anglican Church of Canada.